Syrian government says it will abide by ceasefire

An image from a video uploaded on YouTube purportedly shows Syrian military vehicles stationed in the Qusur district of Homs. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

8.51am: Good morning. Welcome to Middle East Live. The UN and Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan, remains optimistic that a ceasefire will take effect in Syria by tomorrow morning but not many seem to share that view. Meanwhile, activists report continuing attacks.

Syria

• Annan said the Syrian government have assured him they will respect a ceasefire with rebel forces, less than 24 hours before a deadline to suspend hostilities. "I have received government assurances they will respect the ceasefire. If everyone respects it I think by 6 in the morning on Thursday we shall see improved conditions on the ground," he said during a visit to Tehran to shore up support for his six-point peace plan.

• Activists are reporting fresh violence, despite the impending deadline. The Local Co-ordination Committees activist group says there is shelling of several rebel-held neighborhoods in the central city of Homs. It also reports tanks firing in the southern town of Deraa and military aircraft flying over Lattakia and Duamair, in Damascus suburbs. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says "tens of army vehicles" are deploying in the southern town of Maaraba, in Deraa, amid intense shooting.

9.45am:Syria: The government news agency, Sana, issued a lengthy report this morning of the press conference given by the Russian and Syrian foreign ministers following their meeting yesterday in Moscow.

The report begins with the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, saying "that the Syrian government has withdrawn army units from some provinces, yet terrorism activities escalated and spread to other areas". This suggests the regime will resist calls for a full-scale withdrawal as required by the Annan plan and demand that opposition fighters be disarmed first.

Moallem also denied reports that he had asked Annan for "written guarantees from armed groups and countries sponsoring them":

"I asked Annan to contact the armed groups and the countries supporting them ... I asked him to send me a letter on the results of these communications," he said, affirming that the Syrian government is prepared for national dialogue when all the opposition is ready for it, adding that Syria welcomes Russia's offer to host a conference to prepare for national dialogue.

An obstacle further down the line, if the Annan plan eventually gets as far as sending UN observers to monitor a ceasefire in Syria, is that Syria seems to be claiming a right vet the observers. Moallem said observers will be accepted "as long as Syria has a say in the choice of countries from which the observers come and that they respect Syria's sovereignty".

The agency's report also refers to the tensions with Turkey:

Moallem said that Syria is a sovereign country and that it has the right to defend this sovereignty against any violation, adding that unfortunately Turkey is part of the crisis in Syria and it should announce its commitment to Annan's plan on the basis of the respect of all states to the Syrian sovereignty.

He pointed out that Turkey doesn't just host those who were forced to flee their homes by terrorists, but it also hosts armed groups and establishes camps for them and allows these groups to smuggle weapons into Syria and to infiltrate the Syrian borders in violation of Annan's mission which calls for halting the use of violence by all sides.

In an interesting side note, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov referred to the large Russian community in Syria – a factor that is not often mentioned:

Lavrov noted that there are more than 100,000 Russians living in Syria, and that the Russian embassy in Syria sends information that show that the opposition in Syria isn't entirely peaceful, explaining that Russia received information about the discovery of landmines, explosives and weapons and many terrorist activities that affected several cities and the shelling of Syrian armed forces by the opposition.

We asked Hostelling International if they had any comment on this and we now have their reply:

The Seef Youth Hostel in Bahrain is no longer part of the Hostelling International network. It was closed for some months before it was reacquired by the government at some point last year, and the Bahrain Youth Hostel Association was given a new property.

Hostelling International no longer has any connection with the old building and it was removed from hihostels.com once we knew that the building was no longer operated by the Bahrain Youth Hostel Association.

"Mortar fire started at 7 this morning. I can hear one explosion every five minutes," said opposition activist Waleed al-Fares from the central city of Homs.The Khalidiya neighbourhood, where bombardment killed at least 26 people on Tuesday, was again under attack, he said.

In southern Deraa, birthplace of the 13-month-old revolt against four decades of Assad family rule, activists said many busloads of troops backed by armoured vehicles had flooded the city and were making house-to-house raids.Activist Omar al-Hariri said he had never seen so many troops: "The army is exploiting the ceasefire to arrest more dissidents than ever and security forces are burning houses."

11.17am:Egypt: Interesting to discover that the Guardian figures in a campaign video promoting Kairat al-Shater, the Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate.

Three minutes in, the video talks about establishing "dialogue with the west" in 2005 through an article in the Guardian.

It shows a mock-up of something vaguely resembling a Guardian page and a headline: "No need to fear us!" The text beneath the headline isn't legible and a smaller headline on the right appears to be in German.

So far, we have been unable to find the alleged article in the Guardian's archive.

The ICRC sent eight trucks of assistance to Homs on Monday. Distribution of aid continues daily, thanks to the efforts of the volunteers of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent. This is the second ICRC convoy to reach Homs this month and another two are planned over the coming couple of weeks. The aid consists of food parcels, hygienic material, mattresses and blankets meant to assist some 24,000 persons affected by the fighting.

The Syrian government and the ICRC agreed last week that the ICRC's presence and activities in Syria will further expand. That increase in personnel and logisitical resources is set for the end of April or early May. It is in response to the increasing demands and needs of the population in various parts of the country, particularly in the areas of unrest. The expansion also involves increasing support to the SARC to strengthen its capacity and expand its operations. It is worth noting that over the past year, the size of the ICRC team working in Syria has already more than tripled.

During the ICRC president's visit to Syria last week, agreement was reached on procedures for visits to places of detention. It was agreed the ICRC would soon visit Aleppo Central Prison, in line with standard ICRC ways of working (ie. that we be permitted to tour the facilities; talk in private with the detainees of our choice; repeat visits as often as deemed necessary). The ICRC will now be discussing practical details with the Syrian authorities bilaterally. We hope that the process will start soon and that ICRC teams are gradually granted access to other places of detention.

Last week the ICRC also agreed with the Syrian authorities that a humanitarian halt of fighting would be activated upon the ICRC's request should the need arise eg to evacuate the sick and the wounded; to deliver life-saving humanitarian assistance. It is when we are unable to access areas of unrest to help people that such a pause will be requested. We have not tested this yet and cannot speculate on when it will be needed. This will depend on how the situation develops on the ground in different parts of the country, as well as our access to those in need of assistance in a given area and at a particular time.

For the ICRC and the SARC to be able to provide assistance and/or evacuate the injured and the sick, all those involved in the fighting would have to implement a temporary pause. The ICRC has contacts with the opposition and would address it in parallel with the Syrian authorities should a ceasefire be needed for humanitarian reasons.

11.34am:Egypt: An update on the Guardian and the Muslim Brotherhood's presidential campaign video. Although the page shown in the video is a fake, there was indeed an article by Shater in the Guardian's comment pages in 2005. It is here. (Thanks to Sultan al-Qassemi for finding it.)

We were unable to locate it initially because the headline was not as quoted in the video and Shater's name was spelled differently in the byline.

12.05pm:Bahrain: Attacks by pro-regime thugs, previously seen in Syria and Egypt, seem to be increasing in Bahrain.

Today mobs attacked the headquarters of the Jawad group, a major Shia-owned business chain, according to witnesses cited by the Associated Press. The attack was an apparent reprisal by Sunni mobs following an explosion on Monday that injured seven police.

Bahrainis wielding knives and sticks also attacked residents of the kingdom's Shia villages overnight, the Now Lebanon website says. A witness quoted by AFP says:

"I saw hundreds of men carrying knives, sticks and other sharp objects ... They were stopping cars and asking passengers where they lived in order to determine what sect they belonged to."

Al-Wefaq, the largest Shia opposition group, has accused security forces of failing to prevent the attacks.

12.36pm:Syria: Emad Mahou, from the Syrian Revolution Co-ordinators Union, was in Zabadani until recently. He still has contacts in the town, which is in the western mountains, in Damascus suburbs, and told the Guardian over a crackly phone line that they have told him there are no signs of a withdrawal.

There has been shelling since the early hours of the morning. What remains of the Free Syrian Army are in the mountains and so they [government forces] have bombed the mountains.

The government hasn't withdrawn from Zabadani, there are still tanks inside Zabadani. There are five or six canons around the city to bombard the city. We have informers who told us [regular] army reinforcements are coming from Damacus.

I think they are not doing the Annan plan and withdrawing from cities. The Free Syrian Army is holding the ceasefire but if the government attacks they will fight back. I think tomorrow or the next few hours there will be a very big fight when the reinforcements arrive.

He [Bashar al-Assad] tries to finish off every area before 10 April. They are not going to withdraw from cities, they have not withdrawn from Zabadani. They said they were going to withdraw from cities. There is no movement on the ground, they are bringing reinforcements. They won't do anything because they know if they withdraw from cities all the people will go out [to protest].

Mahou called for the international community to create a buffer zone to protect the Syrian people.

They have to make an area on the border to put the people, around the Turkey border, the Jordanian border. We need help. Where is the honour of the nations around the world? We need movement around the world.

As in the country, so in the barracks. Over the past six months, more than a dozen serving or recently retired mid- and lower-ranking officers have said they and their colleagues see Egypt's revolution as their own chance to win better treatment, salaries, and improved conditions and training. They are tired, they said, of a few very top officers becoming rich while the vast majority of officers and ordinary soldiers struggle.

As the military and the Muslim Brotherhood both press their own candidates ahead of the presidential elections scheduled for May and June - former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman entered the race as the army's choice last week and Khairat al-Shater, the Brotherhood's deputy, two weeks ago - the tensions in the lower ranks shed light not only on the country's most powerful institution but on Egypt itself.

"Military ranks struggle like the rest of Egyptians because, like Egyptian society, the wealth of the military is concentrated at the top and does not trickle down. You have to reach a specific rank before wealth is unlocked," one major said.

Syria

• Kofi Annan has expressed his hope that a ceasefire will be in place by 6am tomorrow after the Syrian government assured him it would comply with it. The UN-Arab League envoy is in Iran to try to shore up support for his six-point peace plan.

• Activists claim that attacks by government forces are continuing. The Local Co-ordination Committees activist group claims 14 people have been killed by the security forces so far today. It has reported shelling in Homs, Hama and Idlib. Its reportscannot be independently verified.

• The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said the Syrian government had broken its commitments, describing its behaviour as "outrageous". She said the logical next step for the UN security council was "unified action".

Libya

• The UK government is offering a promininent Libyan dissident more than £1m in compensation for being brutally treated by Muammar Gaddafi's secret police. The government has offered the money to Abdel Hakim Belhaj in a move that would avoid MI6 appearing in open court, where it would face the prospect of explaining its role and that of ministers, the Guardian has been told.

Bahrain

• Danish prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who holds the rotating EU presidency, said that the condition of imprisoned Bahraini-Danish activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja is "very critical". The Danish ambassador to Bahrain was allowed a 20-minute visit with Khawaja at his military hospital bed on Tuesday. The spokesperson for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged "the Bahraini authorities to take all appropriate measures to find a humanitarian solution to Mr Khawaja's deteriorating health situation, as a matter of absolute urgency".

1.38pm:Tunisia: Déjà vu? New protests are reported today in Sidi Bouzid, the town where the Arab spring began in December 2010.

The Tunisie Numerique website (in French) says about 3,000 demonstrators marched through the main street chanting slogans which included "Down with the new Trabelsi" and "Ennahda merchants of religion".

("Trabelsi" is a reference to ex-president Ben Ali's unpopular wife and her family; Ennahda is the main party in the current government.) Tunisie Numerique continues:

The march comes after people distributed pamphlets on Tuesday ... signed by "The Free Youth of Sidi Bouzid" which called for a general strike and a peaceful march today.

Schools, colleges, daycare centres, the regional hospital, the health centre, the post office and Customs have been closed since this morning in Sidi Bouzid except Société Nationale d'Exploitation and Distribution (SONEDE), the Tunisian company electricity and Gas (STEG), the general store and a few merchants.

... Sources said the armed forces are protecting the headquarters of the governorate and "Dar Achaab" (the former headquarters of the RCD), adding that law enforcement officers have kept their posts, and the march is still peaceful.

1.47pm:Bahrain: Here's an update on the mob attacks, from the Associated Press:

Mobs with iron rods and sticks ransacked a supermarket belonging to a major Shia-owned business group Wednesday, a company official said, as part of a spike in violence in the Gulf nation in retaliation for a bomb attack on police.

The attack appeared linked to a wave of reprisals and intimidation by suspected Sunni groups angered by the 14-month-old uprising by Bahrain's Shia majority seeking to weaken the powers of the kingdom's Sunni monarchy.

The growing unrest, which has included vigilante-style attacks in some Shia areas, also could escalate worries by Formula One teams about whether to participate in the 22 April Bahrain Grand Prix. The race was called off last year amid security fears and Bahrain's leaders are pushing hard to bring back the event as a sign of stability in the island nation.

Amir Jawad, a board member for the Jawad Business Group, said the mob smashed windows and caused other damage to the supermarket in what he called a "systematic" series of attacks. The crowds also roamed outside the headquarters of the company, which owns supermarkets, cafes and fast-food outlets.

Jawad said company security guards detained at least two suspected attackers. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

"The vigilantes used iron, steel and wood sticks," he said.

Jawad sites have faced sporadic vandalism since the uprising began in February 2011 in the strategic Gulf nation, which is home to the US navy's 5th Fleet. Bahrain's Shia account for about 70% of the population, but they claim they face widespread discrimination and are kept from top government or military posts.

Nearly 50 people have died in the Arab spring's longest-running street battles. Apparent Sunni mobs have stepped up reprisals following a blast Monday that injured seven policemen. On Tuesday, Bahrain said four suspects had been arrested in connection with the blast.

In some Shia areas, apparent Sunni hardliners carrying knives and sticks staged hit-and-run attacks late Tuesday and set up roadblocks, said witnesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity in fear of receiving pressures from authorities.

The largest Shia political group, al-Wefaq, claimed that security forces failed to confront the "militias."

2.19pm:Bahrain/Egypt: Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab is tweeting from Cairo airport that the authorities are about to deport him to Bahrain:

The officer of the immigration in #cairo airport said that they going to deport me to #bahrain#EGYPT

2.34pm:Syria/Jordan: A Jordanian interior ministry official says the country now has 95,000 Syrian refugees who fled the conflict at home, AP reports.

The official said Wednesday that previous estimates said about 80,000 Syrians had found shelter in Jordan, mostly along the border with Syria. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to make statements to the media.

Activists say a Syrian border clampdown has barred entire families and men under the age of 42 from crossing into Jordan, leading to more Syrians entering the kingdom illegally. The activists believe the restrictions seek to prevent rebels from escaping Syria.

The UN refugee agency has also reported an increase in Syrian refugee registrations in Jordan. It says 7,584 have registered and 2,000 are in the process.

Currently in first place is "Islamic armies rescue us" (number six on the list). In second place is "Revolution for all Syrians" (the top one on the list).

2.51pm:Syria: Kofi Annan, in Tehran to shore up support for his six-point plan on Syria, said Iran, Syria's most important regional ally, "can be part of the solution". The former UN secretary-general told a press conference:

Iran, given its special relations with Syria, can be part of the solution. The geopolitical location of Syria is such that any miscalculation and error can have unimaginable consequences.

At the same press conference, Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by the Tehran Times as saying:

We believe that the people of Syria, like other countries, have the right to enjoy all the rights enjoyed by any other country, such as freedom of political parties, such as freedom (to hold) elections, such as (the right to have) a constitution that encompass all the desires and aspirations of a nation. These are the points we have mentioned.

However, at the same time, we have announced that we are opposed to interference in the internal affairs of countries, including Syria.

"If any change is to occur in Syria, that change should be implemented by the Syrian government itself. And the Syrian government, at the head of which is Mr Bashar al-Assad, has promised to implement all these changes and to fulfill the demands of the people ... Enough time should be given to the Syrian government ... We have a slight disagreement on this point with certain other countries in the region and the west. They think in a different way. They want to see changes taking place there in a different way.

Annan is also due to meet the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during his visit, according to Press TV.

3.13pm:Syria: The UK prime minister, David Cameron, is another one who does not share Kofi Annan's optimism that a ceasefire will come to bear and warned that Bashar al-Assad is endangering Middle East peace. Cameron said:

We estimate that 1,000 people have died in the last week, 300 over the Easter weekend. Far from fulfilling their commitments, the regime is cynically exploiting the window of diplomatic negotiations to crack down even harder on its own people.

With increasing refugee flows across international borders, Assad's actions are now threatening regional peace and security. We want to achieve a negotiated end to the Syrian crisis and avoid full-scale civil war. But Assad seems bent on doing precisely the opposite.

He also urged dissenters on the UN security council to present a unified front to the Assad regime.

This is a decisive moment. The UN security council now has a clear responsibility to throw its full weight behind Kofi Annan's plan and to insist that it is implemented in full.

4.04pm:Syria: Kofi Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said in a statement that a letter from Syria's foreign ministry said that the government agrees "to cease all military fighting throughout Syrian territory as of 6am (4am BST) tomorrow, Thursday, 12 April 2012, while reserving the right to respond proportionately to any attacks carried out by armed terrorist groups against civilians, government forces or public and private property".

Syrian state television quoted a defence ministry source as saying:

After our armed forces carried out successful missions in combatting the criminal acts of terrorist groups and imposed the authority of the state on its land, (it has been) decided to end operations starting tomorrow morning. Our armed forces remain on alert to confront any assault by armed groups against civilians and the security and armed forces.

In response, Reuters reports that Russian deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov said on Twitter that the onus is now on the opposition:

The Syrian government has declared it will cease fire as of 6am on April 12. Now it's up to the armed opposition. Those are the conditions of the Annan plan.

Violence broke out on Monday when protesters attempting to demonstrate there were dispersed by police. The interior ministry originally said the ban was needed because businesses in the area were being disrupted by demonstrations.

>5.07pm: Today's big news is the announcement that the Syrian government will "cease all military fighting" from 6am (local time) tomorrow – but "while reserving the right to respond proportionately to any attacks carried out by armed terrorist groups against civilians, government forces or public and private property".

Middle East Live will be starting earlier than normal tomorrow, to monitor developments. Meanwhile, here are some other key points from today's news:

Syria

• Activists claim that attacks by government forces are continuing. The Local Co-ordination Committees group claims 14 people have been killed by the security forces so far today. It has reported shelling in Homs, Hama and Idlib. Its reports cannot be independently verified.

• The Jordanian interior ministry says 95,000 Syrian refugees have now entered the country, fleeing the conflict at home.

Tunisia

• Demonstrations and strikes are reported in Sidi Bouzid, the town where the Arab Spring began. In Tunis, the cabinet has lifted a ban on demonstrations in the city's main thoroughfare, Avenue Bourguiba.

Bahrain

Pro-government mobs have attacked Shia communities in the kingdom and damaged a Shia-owned supermarket.